They spent nearly a month in trying to recover their path, but all in vain, losing in two hours what they gained in two days, and, their provisions running short, put ashore to revictual.
Touching at the first land they could reach, they sent their canoes up the river Xagua—their guides bringing them to the villages of the "long-eared Indians," a race tributary to Spain, whose traders bartered knives and mirrors with them for cocoa. The Buccaneers burned their huts and carried off their millet, hogs, and poultry, loading the canoes with all the food they could bring away to their impatient comerades, who determined to remain here till the unfavourable weather had passed, and burn and pillage along the whole borders of the gulf. The Indian provisions proved but scanty for so numerous a band, but were divided equally among the ships that were seeking food like locusts, and moving daily on to new pastures.
A council of war was now held to discuss their position. Some were for discontinuing the expedition, since the provisions ran so short. The oldest and most experienced proposed plundering round the gulf till the bad season had passed; and this plan was decided on. Having rifled a few villages, they came to Puerto Cavallo, a place where Spanish ships frequently anchored, and which contained two storehouses full of cochineal, indigo, hides, &c., from Guatimala. There happened then to be lying in the port a Spanish vessel of twenty-four guns and sixteen patarerros. Its cargo, however, was nearly all unloaded and carried up into the interior to be exchanged in barter with the Indians. This ship was instantly seized; and Lolonnois, landing without any resistance, burned the magazines and all the houses, and made many prisoners. The Spaniards he put to the torture to induce them to confess. If any refused to answer, he pulled out their tongues, or cut them to pieces with his hanger, "desiring," says Esquemeling, "to do so to every Spaniard in the world." Many, terrified by the rack, promised to confess, really having nothing to disclose. These men were always cruelly put to death in revenge. One mulatto was bound hand and foot and thrown alive into the sea to intimidate the rest, and to induce two survivors to show the French chief the nearest road to the neighbouring town of San Pedro.
For this expedition Lolonnois selected 300 men, leaving his lieutenant, Moses Vauclin, to govern in his absence, and despatching a few of his small flotilla to help him by a diversion on the coast. Before starting, he told his companions that he would never refuse to march at their head, but that he should kill with his own hand "the first who turned tail." San Pedro was only ten leagues distant. He had not proceeded three before he fell into an ambuscade.
The Spaniards' favourite scheme of attack was the treacherous surprise—a mere sort of attempt at wholesale assassination—seldom successful, and always exasperating the enemy to greater cruelties. They had now entrenched themselves behind gabions in a narrow road, impassable on either side with trees and strong thickets. Lolonnois instantly striking down the guides, whether innocent or guilty, charged the enemy with desperate courage, and put them to flight after a long encounter, ending in a total rout. They killed a few Buccaneers and left many of their own men dead upon the ground. The wounded Spaniards, being first questioned as to the distance from San Pedro, and the best way to get there, were instantly beheaded. The prisoners informed him that some runaway slaves, escaped from Porto Cavallo, had told them of the intended attack on San Pedro. Determined to prevent this, they had planned the ambuscade, and two other still stronger earthworks which awaited him further on. To prevent connivance, or any possible treachery, Lolonnois then had the Spaniards brought before him one by one, and demanded of each in turn if there was no means of getting into another and less guarded road. On their each denying that there was, he grew frenzied and almost mad at the thoughts of such inevitable danger, and had them all murdered but two; and then, in ungovernable passion, he ripped open with his cutlass the breast of one of these survivors, who was bound to a tree. Esquemeling asserts that he even tore out his heart and gnawed it "like a ravenous wolf," swearing and shouting that he would serve them all alike if they did not show him another way. The miserable survivor, willing to save his life at any risk, his memory or invention quickened by the imminent danger, conducted him into another path, but so bad a one that Lolonnois preferred to return to the old one in spite of all its perils, so difficult, slow, and laborious was the march. He now seems to have grown almost fevered with rage, anxiety, and vexation. "Mon Dieu," he growled, "les Espagnols me le payeront," and he cursed the delay that kept him from the enemy.
There is no doubt that in these men a fanatical and almost superstitious hatred of the enemy had sprung up, inflamed by mutual cruelties, for forgiveness was not the chief virtue of the victorious Spaniard. To the Buccaneer the Spaniard seemed cruel, cowardly, treacherous, and degraded; to the Spaniard the Buccaneer seemed a monster scarcely human—bloody, voluptuous, faithless, and rapacious.
That same evening the chief fell into a second ambuscade, which, says Esquemeling, "he assaulted with such horrible fury" that in less than an hour's time he routed the Spaniards and killed the greater part of them, the rest flying to the third ambush, which was planted about two leagues from the town. The Spaniards had thought, by these repeated attacks, to destroy the enemy piecemeal, and for this object, which they did not attain, frittered their forces into small and useless detachments.
Lolonnois and his people, weary with fighting and marching, and half-fainting with hunger and thirst, lay down in the wood that night, and slept till the morning, the matelots keeping good watch and ward, and guarding their sleeping companions. At daybreak they resumed their journey, with confidence increased by the clear light and with bodies invigorated by rest. The third ambuscade was stronger and more advantageously placed than even the two preceding. They attacked it with showers of fire-balls, and drove out the enemy, slaying without mercy, and giving no quarter. "No quarter, no quarter," cried their ferocious leader, still thirsty for human blood, when they would have stayed their hands, from exhaustion rather than from pity. "The more we kill here, the less we shall meet in the town," was his war-cry. Very few of the enemy escaped to San Pedro, the greater part being either slain or wounded.
Before they ventured to make the final attack, the Buccaneers rested to look to their arms and prepare their ammunition. In vain they attempted to discover a second approach. There was but one, and that was well barricaded, and planted all round with thorny shrubs, which the best shod traveller could not pass, much less barefooted men, clad only in a shirt and drawers. These thorns, Œxmelin says, were more dangerous than those crow's-feet used in Europe to annoy cavalry.
Lolonnois, seeing that no other way was left, and that delay would imply fear in his own men, and excite hope in the enemy, resolved to storm the works, in spite of the rage and despair of a well-armed and superior force, sheltered from shot and commanding his approach. "The Spaniards," says Esquemeling, "posted behind the said defences, seeing the pirates come, began to ply them with their great guns; but these, perceiving them ready to fire, used to stoop down, and then the shot was made to fall upon the defendants with fire-balls and naked swords, killing many of the town." Driven back for a time, they renewed the attack with fewer men; husbanding their shot, for they were now short of powder; never shooting at a long distance; and seldom firing but with great deliberation when an enemy's head appeared above the rampart; and occasionally giving a general discharge, in which nearly every bullet killed an enemy. Several times the Buccaneers advanced to the very mouths of the guns, and, throwing down fire-balls into the works, leaped after them, sword in hand, through the embrasures; but only to be again driven back.